NEW YORK, Oct. 18 -- A burst of selling on crypto exchanges wiped out nearly $52 million in leveraged chip-stock bets in 10 minutes on Saturday evening, with Wall Street closed and the shares themselves frozen. With no stock market open, there was no real share price for the contracts to follow, CoinDesk reported.

The bets were perpetual futures, contracts that track a stock's price and trade around the clock on crypto platforms. A trader who leverages a position is closed out automatically when losses eat through the deposit, and the forced selling can push prices lower for the next trader in line. The flush came after a week in which a tech stock rout hit Seoul and Tokyo, with South Korea's KOSPI down 7.57 percent on Thursday.

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